Pardes Faculty Traveling

Havruta

By Amanda Pogany

This year a group of our veteran alumni embarked on an exciting
project on how to use Havruta more effectively in our classrooms, led by Dr.
Orit Kent from the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis
University. We gathered at Brandeis for a two day workshop in which we
were introduced to research based frameworks for havruta learning, including
six core practices of havruta. Since then, we have been translating these
ideas into our classrooms. We have been working on developing havruta
lessons and study guides for our students that will help them deepen their
havruta work and we've met monthly to share and reflect on our work and videos
from our classrooms. In the upcoming year, we look forward to sharing
many of our ‘take-aways’ with you. Below are some reflections by the
participants. We hope that our reflections will inspire your thinking on
this important topic.

We began the year by observing our students working in havruta. What
follows are some of our insights.

I
am more aware of the ebb and flow within each havruta group, taking
more time to focus on individual havrutot. Previously I found myself
'bouncing around' from group to group, but the process of filming one
havruta has opened my eyes to trends and an intellectual-emotional
momentum that builds over the course of the text study.

I
noticed that my students have different learning styles. One student
may like to see the whole before going into the parts, while another
student may need to understand the parts before seeing the whole. Do we
try and put kids together with the same learning styles? (as opposed to
cognitive abilities and other variables?)

I
can identify the dominant partner in the havruta. How can I have kids
assess their power in the havruta? Should I identify those students who
“speaks the most” and for the next session, their job is to just listen?

Havruta
learning is like a rabbit hole; the further down I peer, the further
down it goes. I find myself asking questions about ‘how and why’ which I
had always taken for granted because, as a Pardes student, havruta was
‘muvan ma'alav.’

I
am thinking a lot about how dependent I am on worksheets for
structuring and running my class. I see how the worksheets in some way
truncate conversation. The students share one thought about each
question and then move on to the next. How can I get them to engage in a
deeper more authentic way with a text?”

Reflections On Listening and Articulating

The first set of havruta practices and skills that we explored was
Listening and Articulating. First, we introduced the practices in our
classrooms by asking students to reflect on what each role looks like.
Then we worked on integrating the practices into the students’ havruta
learning experiences.

I
was impressed by how students struggled to learn/focus on the
substantive material while simultaneously being conscious of their roles
as active listener/articulator. I feel that it will take a good amount
of time for these techniques to become so ingrained in their דרך חברותא
that they cease to be an obstacle.

It
was fascinating to hear the majority of my sixth graders state
categorically that if their partner is fidgeting or doodling, the
partner is not really being a Listener. It was equally fascinating to
hear them negotiate what constitutes acceptable doodling and fidgeting
and what does not.

It
was surprising for me to see how many of my students can 'talk the
talk', but have no idea how to 'walk the walk'. They know the things
they think they 'should' say about what havruta is- partner work,
deepening their individual understanding of the text, etc.- but when it
came to actually listening to one another and working to help their
havruta articulate their thoughts, many partnerships deferred to the
'stronger' student taking the lead (therefore, the 'smarter' student
gave 'the' answers and the 'weaker' or 'less popular' student became a
yes-man).

I've
usually had conversations with students about listening and responding,
but I used to do them BEFORE they began working with their hevrutot.
This time, I reinforced it to individual students during their havrutot
and then we DEBRIEFED together, and the students had a lot to say about
'what made them feel seen, heard, and felt’.”

Reflections on Supporting and Challenging

For the second set of practices, we took the same approach; first
introducing and unpacking the practices and then integrating them into the
learning. Supporting and Challenging were more complex for the students
especially when they had to take on the role of being the supporting partner or
the challenging partner

I
am struck by how some of my students can intellectually talk about what
‘supporting’ and ‘challenging’ means, but when putting it into
practice, they revert to ‘I like what you said’ and seem to take on the
role of ‘supporting’ as being a cheerleader.

I
also noticed how some of my ninth grade class think they have been
supporting and challenging the whole time, and I wonder how I can get
them to really be conscious of what they are doing well and what they
are not doing well. While I am aware that this level of unconsciousness
may be appropriate for the developmental stage that they are at, I do
wonder how we can raise their consciousness in a way that is helpful and
promotes learning.

How do you help students support each other, if they themselves are struggling with what the text is saying?

Some
of the students seemed to thrive on the structure I put in place to
practice supporting and challenging. I think they may have used it as
an opportunity to show kavod to their havruta's ideas where it might
otherwise have seemed 'uncool' to do so. For other students I sensed
that the structure focused them in a way that free-form havruta would
not.”